Is Marriage Holy?

What attitude of mind does a perception of the inward holiness or religious sanctity of marriage enjoin upon those who suffer from any of the offenses included in the violation of the outward bond?—a vindictive attitude or a forgiving one?

I am by no means satisfied that I have done any too ample justice to my
subject; but I think I have at least made it clear to the reader that the
sanctity of marriage inheres eminently in its social, and by no means in its
selfish, uses; in other words, that its purpose is to educate us out of our
animal beginnings into a definitely humane consciousness at last. And if this
be so, I am sure we have small cause for exultation, when we look around us and
contemplate the awful horrors which beset the institution in its present almost
exclusively selfish administration. Taking the newspapers for our guide, we
should say that marriage as a legal bond had sunk so low in men's esteem as to
have become the appanage of the baser classes exclusively; that no one any
longer really identifies himself with the outer covenant but some sordid
ruffian, steeped in debauchery, whose lust of blood finds an easy victim in his
unprotected wife, or some fancied paramour of his wife. The only original
inequality known to the human race is that of the sexes, and marriage in
annulling this forever sanctifies weakness to the regard of the strong, or
makes true manhood to consist no longer in force, but in gentleness. But who,
according to our newspapers, are the men that are now most forward to vindicate
in their precious persons the honor of marriage? Are they not for the most part
men, notoriously, of profligate antecedents, who are much more disposed to live
UPON society, as things go, than to live for it? And what a stunning farce it
is that heaven and earth should be convulsed, every other day, to render to
such caitiffs as these what they are pleased to consider justice! What good
man, what man who ever felt a breath of true reverence for marriage in his
soul, does not abhor to think of its hallowed name being prostituted to such
vile issues as these?

It revolts all one's instincts of God's goodness to
suppose that any essential discrepancy can exist between the interests
of man and man: as that I, for example, can ever be really harmed by any other
person's entire freedom to do as he pleases, or really profited by his partial
restraint. For every man who thinks knows that absolutely no conflict of
interests exists among men, which does not grow out of some merely instituted
or conventional inequality to which they are subject, and which would not
instantly disappear by voiding such inequality, or releasing the parties from
each other's thraldom. And we may as well, therefore, make up our minds to it
at once&mdashfor we shall be obliged to do so sooner or later&mdashthat any law
which makes itself the partisan of men's divided, and not exclusively of
their associated, interests may call itself divine if it pleases, but it
has no claim whatever to the conscientious reverence of mankind. It may put on
what solemn airs, and array itself in what tinsel majesty it will, no one is
the least deceived by it, or will ever entertain anything but an interested
regard for it. Men will make use of it of course to promote their selfish or
merely prudential ends; but every upright man will scorn to endue himself in
its righteousness. Nothing, I am persuaded, but the active influence and
operation of such a law, professing to adjudicate between man and man, and not,
as it ought to do, exclusively between every individual man on the one hand,
and our infirm traditional civilization on the other, accounts for the beastly
lasciviousness, the loathsome adulteries, and bloody revenges which disfigure
our existing manners. For no man is wiser than the community of men of which he
is an atom; and if the community tolerate a law which distinguishes between the
interests of husband and wife, or makes either primarily responsible, to the
other, and not both alike exclusively responsible to society, then we may
depend upon it, every man of simply defective culture, much more every man in
whose breast the social sentiment has been precluded by a vicious life, will be
sure to take this inhuman communism for his own rule of action and see in the
law, whenever his bad occasion arises, not the enemy, but the accomplice of his
implacable lusts.

Does any of my readers doubt these things? Is there any intelligent reader of
this magazine who can persuade himself that the interests of society, in any
just sense of that much-abused word, were involved, for example, in any
conceivable issue to the most recent conspicuous divorce suit in New York? It
is of absolutely no moment, in fact, to our social well-being, but, on the
contrary, a very great prejudice to it, that any particular person should be
convicted at any time, or acquitted at any time, upon a charge of lying, theft,
adultery, or murder; and our judiciary, regarded as the voucher of society, or
of a plenary divine righteousness in the earth, acts, as it seems to me, with
sheer impertinence in wasting its strength in these frivolous perquisitions.
For what you want, supremely, to do with every man, is to qualify him at last
for human society; and how can you do this, save in so far as you gradually
exempt him from all allegiance to outward law, or a law with exclusively
outward sanctions,&mdashthose of hope and fear,&mdashand accustom him instead to
the law of his own nature, which acknowledges only the inward sanctions
positive and negative, of his own unforced self-respect and unaffected self-
contempt? Pray tell me then, my reader, what business it is of yours or mine,
that any man's wife in the community, or any woman's husband, has either
veritably or conjecturally committed adultery, and should be legally convicted
or legally absolved of that unrighteousness. What social right has any man or
woman to thrust the evidence off a transaction so essentially private,
personal, and irremediable upon the light of day? "To assist them," it may be
said, "in obtaining justice." Yes, indeed, the demands of justice are absolute;
but when did it ever become just that one person should be rendered simply
infamous to promote the welfare of another? On the contrary, it would seem
almost invariably that what the applicant in these cases craves is, not
justice, but revenge pure and simple. In fact, I can see no reason, in my own
observation, to doubt that Christ's judgment, recorded in the eighth chapter of
John's Gospel, is conclusive on all this class of cases; and this judgment
implies that they who thus invoke the public resentment of their private griefs
are seldom so sincerely averse to the offense itself as they are to being
themselves passively and not actively related to it. For when we really hate
evil itself, and not merely the personal inconveniences it entails, nothing is
so instinctive to us as compassion for its victims. I cannot imagine, for
example, that any man or woman whose own bosom is the abode of chaste love,
could ever be tempted by any selfish reward to fasten a stigma of unchastity
upon anybody else. The existence of a sentiment so pure in one's own bosom is
inconsistent with a defamatory or condemnatory spirit towards another person;
must infallibly dispose one to put the mildest interpretation upon any
apparent criminality in another, to mitigate rather than heighten every
evidence of misconduct which to a baser mind would afford a presumption of
guilt.

But let my reader settle this point as he may, I insist upon it that the law,
regarded as the earthly palladium of divine justice, is fast forfeiting its
ancient renown, by too assiduously ministering to these cupidities of a
frivolous and malignant self-love. Society, I repeat, has no manner of interest
in seeing any of her children justified or made righteous at the cost of any
other's permanent defilement. What alone society demands&mdashand this it
imperatively demands&mdashis, that lying, theft, adultery and murder be
effectually done away with, cease any longer to characterize human
intercourse. A true society, or LIVING fellowship among men, is incompatible
with these hostile and clandestine relations. And exactly what the law,
regarded as the carnal symbol of such society or fellowship, logically
covenants to do, is no longer to content itself with exalting one man by the
abasement of another, but to scourge without mercy every instituted decency
upon earth, which, usurping the hallowed name of society, and reaping all its
revenues from such usurpation, not only permits, but actually thrives by, the
grossest inhumanity of man to man.

I beg my reader will not misunderstand me. What I say is, in effect this. The
duty of the judge who tried the recent case in New York was doubtless to
enforce the letter of the law, so far as it had been violated by either party
to the prejudice of the other. But this was a subordinate duty. An infinitely
more binding duty lay upon him to vindicate the spirit of the law, which was
all the while so foully outraged and betrayed by the very trial itself,
whatever might be its literal issues. The spirit of a law which on its literal
side restrains men from evil-doing is obviously a spirit of the divinest
justice among men, or, what is the same thing, of the heartiest mutual love and
forbearance. And how openly crucified, mocked, and put to shame was this divine
spirit, when the letter of its righteousness was perverted to the ends of the
basest selfishness, or even made to echo the foulest spiritual hate and
malignity! The husband in this case, like every man similarly tempted, came
before the august tribunal of the law with a bosom of the deadliest animosity
towards the person of his wife. He appealed to the traditional sanctity which
the law enjoys in men's regard, not with any view to honor its peaceful and
loving spirit, but only to avail himself of the power which its pitiless letter
gave him to crush his offending and helpless wife out of men's kindly sympathy
and remembrance; thus displaying a spiritual turpitude beside which any
probable amount of literal evil-doing seems to me almost white and clean; for
at the worst these things never have the effrontery to demand a legal
justification. And yet the judge who tried the cause, who sat there only to
avouch the honor of the law, had not a word to say in behalf of its prostituted
majesty, not a word in rebuke of the flagrant hypocrisy which appealed to its
majesty for no other purpose than to glut a base personal lust of vengeance!

Of course no one can harbor any personal ill-will towards the complainant in
the case. On the contrary, he is entitled to every man's unfeigned
commiseration. He is himself the victim of a vicious system of an unenlightened
public conscience, and has done nothing more than illustrate its habitual
venom; nothing more than almost every one else would do under like provocation,
who believes as he does in our existing civilization as a finality of God's
providence upon the earth, and cultivates the rapacious, libidinous, and
vindictive temper it breeds in all its froward children. No, I refer to his
case only because it furnishes a fair exemplification of the unsuspected moral
dry-rot among us which conceals itself under the sanctions of religion and
police, and yet degrades our law-courts on occasion into foci of obscene
effluence unmatched by any brothels in the land. And I have obviously no
interest either in these examples themselves, save as they enforce my general
argument, which is that no possible discredit could ever befall the
administration of justice among us, if only our magistrates would comprehend
the spirit of their great office, which is eminently a social and not a selfish
spirit; that is to say, which is never a spirit of petty condemnation towards
this, that, or the other man, but of the freest, frankest justification of all
mankind. I have not the least intention, of course, to hint that the law has
not always been stanch at bottom to the interests of human society, as
society has been hitherto constituted. All I want to say is, that society is
getting to mean, now, something very different from what it has ever before
meant. It has all along meant an instituted or conventional order among men,
and this order was to be maintained at whatever cost to the individual man; if
need be, at the cost of his utmost physical and moral degradation. People no
longer put this extravagant estimate upon our civic organization. Our existing
civilization seems now very dear at that costly price. Society, in short, is
beginning to claim interests essentially repugnant to those of any established
order. It utterly refuses to be identified with any mere institutions, however
conventionally sacred, and claims to be a plenary divine righteousness in our
very nature. The critical moment of destiny seems to be approaching, the day of
justice and judgment for which the world has been so long agonizing in prayer,
a day big with wrath against every interest of man which is organized upon the
principle of his inequality with his brother, and full of peace to every
interest established upon their essential fellowship. Every day an increasing
number of persons reject our cruel civilization as a finality of God's
providence upon earth. Every day burns the conviction deeper in men's bosoms,
that there is no life of man on earth so poor and abject, whose purification
and sanctification are not an infinitely nearer and dearer object to the heart
of God than the welfare of any Paris, any London, any New York extant. And this
rising preponderance of the human sentiment in consciousness over the personal
one is precisely what accounts for the growing disrespect into which our legal
administration is falling, and precisely what it must try to mould itself upon,
if it would recover again the lost ground to which its fidelity to the old
ideas is constantly subjecting it.